


Concupiscent

by Noccalula



Series: The Salacious Saga [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sex Shop, Ambiguous Relationships, Aromantic Loki, BDSM, Bisexuality, Canon Disabled Character, Cunnilingus, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Dom Loki (Marvel), Double Penetration, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi, Non-Sexual Submission, Open Relationships, Polyamory, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sex Shop, Sex Toys, Therapy, Threesome - F/M/M, Triad - Freeform, Vaginal Sex, Well not everyone, pansexuality, therapeutic BDSM, there will be both, y'all know me there will be copious cunnilingus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-03-06 13:02:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13411800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noccalula/pseuds/Noccalula
Summary: Concupiscentcon·cu·pis·cent/känˈkyo͞opəsənt/adjectiveformalfilled with sexual desire; lustful."concupiscent dreams"Weathering a professional crisis back in New York shortly after managing a personal one, Natasha Romanov finds herself back at a familiar nexus: her emotional dysfunction causing trouble in her recently upended world. Freshly thirty and still no closer to having answers about her internal struggles, Nat makes a decision to undertake the emotional work to figure out once and for all what exactly keeps her at arm's length from everyone else. Join us as Natasha navigates her failures in love and burgeoning opportunities, managing a successful sex toy company on two coasts, and does some of the hardest exploration of all: the ups, downs, upside-downs, on tops and from behinds of just what in the hell goes on inside of our own heads and hearts.Alternately, Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones But Whips and Chains May Force Me To Confront My Own Gaping Chasm of Existential Dread(Head's up - this is graphically, comically, unflinchingly, gynecologically sexual - just more leather this time)





	1. Saturday Night Beaver

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back! 
> 
> We're a bit later than anticipated - please see the Tumblr (noccalula-writes) for further details but I had a tandem health/family crises pop up at once and I'm still recovering from all of the above. 
> 
> That said, we're ready to join Natasha in Part 3 of the 4 Part Salacious Saga. 
> 
> **This leg will deal heavily with BDSM and trauma recovery.** Please see my Tumblr for a more in-depth post on this but please know that if you've been able to weather some of our more difficult topics so far, I will be handling this topic with the same degree of levity and care that I try to handle all things. I will add pertinent content warnings as the chapters progress - for now, we're just getting started. 
> 
> Welcome back and as always, thank you.  
> <3

_We repeat what we don’t repair,_ said the sign hanging in the front lobby, a marvelous sunset of pink and orange with black text hovering over it peacefully.

Natasha smoothed her hands over her Black Milk leggings, bouncing her leg just slightly as she checked her phone one more time. 7:03. Tony should have been out three minutes ago if therapists were as prompt as she assumed they were, and yet she was still sitting alone with the receptionist in this glossy white office that reminded her a bit of Salacious West Coast. Missing California was not something she’d ever assumed she’d be doing but lo and behold – she clicked on Instagram to scroll one more time through the pictures of Jess, Claire and Jane at the beach earlier that week.

Good for Jess to still be making time for a social life considering that she had more or less absorbed half of Natasha’s job while she flitted back and forth across coasts, trying to triage the absolute chaos that was now her life.

She’d had a perfectly uneventful abortion (aside from the revelation that her dear friend was pregnant with her twin brother’s child, of all things) and a wonderful two weeks of relaxing and catching up with her New York friends, getting to walk around and look at a city where seasons actually happen. She’d barely been back in California long enough to get sushi with Steve and Bucky – who, for the record, were wonderful and nothing really felt different despite all her lingering fears – and get back into work before she’d received one of the worst phone calls of her life.

The memory of Tony struggling to breathe, the sheer terror rolling off of him in waves. _The Brownsville store – it’s burned down. It’s gone_.

The door opened and Nat’s attention snapped back up as she shoved her phone into her pocket. Tony wandered out with a few warm if meek closings to the woman who walked with him to the doorway, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking every bit as thinly worn as he was these days. The bags under his designer frames were twice as apparent as usual and Natasha noticed every time she came back that he looked a little thinner than before.

However, eyes landing on Natasha, Tony smiled wearily, “Hey, I didn’t think you were coming in tonight?”

Smiling back warmly – Jesus, he looked rough – Natasha got up to embrace him, “Surprise, I called Claudia and she said she was picking you up here so I told her I’d come get you. You hungry?”

However removed she might have been from her mostly-dead Russian family, the impulse to immediately feed the troubled – and skinny – was never too far from her heart. The Babushka she never met would be proud.

Behind Tony stood the woman she assumed was his therapist, a willowy strawberry blonde with the fairest skin and bluest eyes Natasha had seen this side of Darcy (the thought of whom still gave Natasha an adverse reaction now). She leaned in the doorway in her slate blue silk blouse and pencil skirt and smiled at Nat when they caught eyes. Despite herself, Natasha’s chest fluttered a little. _Do not hit on your friend’s therapist_.

“Hi, you must be Natasha,” she gestured at the hair, “I’ve heard wonderful things about you. I’m Karen Page.”

“Karen,” Natasha repeated with a warm little half-smile, practically feeling Tony smirking behind her as she reached out to shake Karen’s slender hand, “Hopefully most of them are true.”

The therapist laughed and gestured at Tony, “He’s a wily one but I trust what he tells me. Have a good night, Tony, I’ll see you next week.”

“Yes ma’am,” Tony gave a nod, shoving his arms into his Tom Ford jacket before immediately shoving his hands back into his pockets.

Once they were back out into the crisp night air, Natasha cut a smirk over at Tony only to find him doing the same thing. The two of them chuckled dirtily to themselves as they passed through the breezeway and out into the parking lot. Nobody had to point out what they each knew one another was thinking.

“You get a rental?” Tony asked but then paused and laughed when he recognized his Audi in the lot, “Oh, okay, so Claudia lends my car out for me now.”

“Get in, loser, we’re going to the diner.”

~~~

The manila folder spread across her side of the table contained the final official report from the New York Fire Investigator’s office, a big red FILED stamp across the bottom of the paper. Skimming it and the printed color photos inside brought back the vivid memories of her arrival by night to the scene of the fire. The smell of the fire extinguishers stuck heavy to Tony’s clothes to the point that he simply got rid of them; she could still smell it on him when he and Claudia picked her up from the airport. His eyes had been so pink and swollen but he was betablocker-calm and medicated by the time she got a game plan together for West Coast and snagged her flight back home.

She remembered looking into the front seat, watching Claudia’s pale hand resting warmly on his thigh though no one was saying much at all. Some small piece of her envied that kind of support though she knew if the tables were turned Steve and Bucky would have been there the second she called.

Hell, Clint would have hopped the first flight home. But that was then.

By the time she arrived in person at what used to be the Brownsville store, the preliminary investigation was completed and the recovery efforts had begun. Piles of scorched rubble were being scooped away by a small crane and she had to watch her step mindfully as she crossed the tape and stepped into what would have been the nook behind the cash register. Natasha could hardly consolidate the blackened counter, melted in the plastic places and the glass splintered away, with the one she’d sat behind for years. The “Please Do Not Lean On The Glass” sign was long gone, probably in the pile of cinders beneath the shards, and she thought about the thousand times she leaned against that glass with the faintest worry that she’d eventually be the straw that broke the camel’s back and the whole pane would give way.

If only she’d known.

The standing walls and displays that hadn’t warped and melted were covered in rolling black bark-like scorch, the smell of ash so strong it would be still be in her nose once she was back in California. For days on end, Natasha swore she could smell burning everywhere she went – inside of her own apartment, at Steve and Bucky’s, inside of her guiltily pristine office.

Something inside of her felt broken and sad as she kicked through the melted dvd cases, only a sliver of some porn star’s bent over ass unscorched but warped. This place had been home, the nexus of it all. In her grander fantasies, Natasha imagined this store having some sort of plaque reminding customers that this was the flagship that launched Salacious into a nationwide name, sex toy enthusiasts making the pilgrimage to their dildo Vatican to meet a staff of friendly, knowledgeable experts who would guide them on a Willy Wonka-esque adventure through sexual liberation.

Across the way, Wanda stood in her zipped up hoodie, already freezing though the temperature wasn’t particularly cold yet. Her big eyes were wet and pinked when Natasha got close enough to see her, the two of them embracing right where they’d first stacked dildos together what seemed like forever ago.

“Are you okay?” Natasha had asked urgently, unsure if Tony knew about the pregnancy but unwilling to risk saying it out loud, running her hands over the long ends of Wanda’s hair as it rested along her arms.

Thankfully, Wanda had gotten out before the smoke made seeing the exit untenable and blessedly no one had been inside of the store at the time the fire broke out somewhere inside of Tony’s office. The stacks of unfiled paperwork and general mess had fed it enough tinder to have the flames licking the roof by the time Wanda had even begun to look for the source of the smell of burning. The tiny fire extinguisher had done nothing despite her most valiant effort, the blaze too big too fast to be stopped.

The thought of Wanda facing down a fire twice her size, armed only with a fire extinguisher and her courage, made Natasha feel sick. She had pulled her into another hug, held her longer, until she saw Pietro walking the periphery of the tape and watching nervously. The concern on his face drove home the feeling that they very easily could have lost Wanda that night.

Tony watched from across the booth, his mug of black coffee in one hand and his barely touched toast and fruit bowl somewhere in the menagerie of department photos and copies of reports.

“Accidental.” He took a sip and shook his head, ruminating for a moment. “They said it was a loose wire in the socket by the filing cabinet. Could have happened literally anytime.”

“There’s not a damn thing you could have done, Tony,” Natasha said softly, looking across at him and trying to hold his gaze, “You know that, right? It says it right here in this report.”

“I had a flicker in there maybe a week before, the lamp tried to go out. I should have called an electrician.” Tony swept his hand up over his hair, atypically absent of mousse, and dropped his gaze back to the pictures, “Did you see the stockroom? It’s basically one plastic puddle of pink and purple glitter. Kinda pretty, actually.”

Though she appreciated his attempt at levity, Nat didn’t laugh.

“Lost the entire fuckin’ stock,” he said for the umpteenth time, something Natasha had been going back and forth with him about since the night it happened.

“Yes but we didn’t lose _anybody_ , Tony, and that’s the important part. The rest is all material.”

Tony’s face didn’t so much fall as gradually drop, leaning to put his head in both his hands and rub at the back of his neck. Natasha didn’t have to see him or talk to Claudia to know exactly how Tony was going to react to the idea of Wanda being in mortal peril but she hadn’t anticipated how much help he’d need in recovering from the entire fiasco.

After all, Tony’s history of PTSD and substance abuse was a fact known only to some, and even Natasha herself didn’t realize the extent to which he was still affected until a fire suddenly took away their first business. That said, the strongest thing Tony had to drink so far was black coffee, so the little victories were there to be taken at will.

“I know,” he murmured into his mug before seeming to get a little bit of a recharge, sitting up straight, “I know it. She’s okay, that’s the biggest concern in all this, Wanda’s safety.”

Natasha thought of Wanda’s burgeoning pregnancy, all the stress she must have been under. If anything adverse had happened she certainly hadn’t told her, so Natasha was left to assume there were no complications. Hopefully. The irony that she’d been hoping for a miscarriage for herself only a month earlier was not lost on her.

“So the insurance…” Nat began, raking a hand back through her hair that did indeed seem too long for New York, a part of her California life that was somehow out of place here, “Where are we with the claim?”

“It’s open, they’ve already talked to Pepper and next they’re meeting with our California lawyers,” Tony furrowed his brow, trying to remember, “Nelson and… Murdock, right?”

A knowing look passed between the two of them and Nat sighed, nodding, “Right.”

Tony paused only a moment to look her over, “Really not going to tell him a thing about the abortion, huh? Can’t say I blame you from what you said.”

“No, I’m really not.” This was not a point of contention for her in the slightest – there’d been no easier decision than knowing Matt needed to know not a goddamn thing. After all, there’d only been a one in three chance in his favor but even that would be enough for Matt to show his ass if Natasha still knew him like she felt she did.

The personal crisis that had felt like her own private Vietnam had been swept away succinctly by the fire and all the ensuing chaos, doubly so given that Tony was clearly in no shape to make all the decisions himself. Natasha had been sure he’d veto when she originally told him she was going bicoastal until they had arrived at some sort of stasis in what to do, whether it was on the grounds of unnecessary worry or a burden on their resources for flights that frequent, but he had surprised her by relenting quickly.

The ensuing battle plan had been to leave Wanda to recover, only pulling her into the loop on a need-to-know basis until she felt ready to talk shop, and to work on getting the recovery team to clean up the site as quickly as possible while insurance adjusters did whatever dark magic it was they were supposed to do. At that point it would become clearer if the more viable option was to rebuild or take the loss and walk away, pinning the company back onto the smaller store downtown and the West Coast location. The immediate coordination of lawyers and insurance people was already done by the time Natasha was boots down, Claudia having taken charge once Tony had shut down.

Natasha wasn’t entirely sure what it was Claudia did for a living, exactly, only that she was obscenely wealthy like Tony, from an old money family somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Her business acumen suggested something in that field but she’d never taken the time to find out, oddly enough. Making it a point to ask later, Nat worked on her latte and waited for her eggs and turkey bacon to arrive while she scanned over the spread of documents one more time for good measure.

“Man,” she sighed, “What a shitshow, huh?”

~~~

Though she had deleted him as a contact after the breakup, Natasha knew Clint’s number by sight when she saw it come up on her phone. A month, two months ago this might have caused that god-awful twist in her stomach she had carefully avoided at every possible turn, the same one that she felt every time she looked at the long-forgotten box at the top of her closet in her Cali apartment. Now? She’d been idling at high anxiety since the fire and the only thing she felt when she looked at the screen was tired. Too tired for this.

But she was waiting on her boarding flight back west with nothing other than two near abandoned games of Words With Friends between herself and Jessica/Jane, so any other choice would just be deliberate avoidance.

“Hello?” she asked, the greeting feeling strange in her mouth as even now she fought the instinct to answer with a “sup” or “hey” as though no time had passed, as though they were still talking all the time.

“Nat? It’s Clint.”

His voice was familiar and sweet like the taste of a favorite food and there it was, beneath the soot and the rubble of the metaphorical fire that the literal one had set to her: longing. It was small, barely a squeaking floorboard in her heart’s attic, but it was there. It refused to be silent.

“Clint,” she said his name and it felt equally odd and so, so good, “Hey, how are you?”

“I heard the store burned down, I had to call and make sure you were okay.”

The tremor of concern in his voice was as if they’d only spoken yesterday, like there hadn’t been almost four months of dead air between the two of them after all that time together. But Clint was nothing if not transparent in his feelings – there was no ulterior motive here. He was just worried. Natasha could see the face she knew he was making wherever it was he was calling from.

“Uh, yeah, it did,” she furrowed her brow, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, “How did you hear?”

“Barney saw the fire burning from up the street, called me but I didn’t get a message until this morning. Was anybody hurt?”

“No, Wanda was in the store but she got out in time. Nobody got hurt, total loss of the store and all the stock but nobody got hurt.” This blessing didn’t seem as mixed when she was talking to someone who wasn’t invested in the business, the quantifying of human life over profit seeming so much more obvious when she wasn’t talking line figures with insurance adjusters. “Guess that means you’re still pretty far out of pocket, then?” she asked, chewing the inside of her lip.

He paused for a moment to give a small huff that was maybe a laugh, maybe exasperation, “Yeah, I am. But I’ll be back in New York before too much longer, y’know, if you’re gonna be around. Wasn’t too sure if you’d have to hold down the fort in Cali or what.”

The notion of him wanting to see her, of being anywhere near Clint again twisted at her. _Ah, welcome back, old familiar feeling like devastation is just around the corner_. It seemed like a terribly stupid idea.

“Sure. I mean, I’m kind of back and forth right now, I don’t have a lot of time.”

“That’s okay,” he was almost too quick to interject, “It’ll be another month, probably. Just wanted to see if you were okay with that.”

Then a pause.

“You got my box, right?”

The lamented, maligned Schrodinger’s emotional torture device that lived at the top of her closet like a monster in a nightmare? That box?

“I think so, yeah. I’ve still got tons of boxes around from the move, still haven’t unpacked everything yet.”

It was a clumsy lie – Natasha’s utilitarian lifestyle meant she rarely kept enough stuff to make a mess anyway – and she was sure he’d call her out on it but he did no such thing, kept rolling like water off a duck’s back in a way that tickled at Natasha as nervous. Maybe. This was kind of reassuring if she was entirely honest with herself.

“Right, the nomad lifestyle, I know it well,” he laughed a little and she could see that too, see the lines near his eyes and the way he was nervously holding one hand to his hip because he had no idea what to do with his free hand, “Right, well if you want I can drop you a line when I know I’ll be back. We can have dinner or something, I wanna hear all about bein’ a CEO.”

The chuckle response was real and Natasha shook her head, “I’m not a CEO. Just a VP.”

“Same fancy difference,” he teased, and it felt so natural she had almost forgotten literally the entire context of this conversation, “But I’ll get up with you soon, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Alright. Uh, hang in here. Tell Tony I said it’ll be alright.”

“Will do.” She would absolutely not do.

“Bye.”

Natasha said nothing, pulling the phone away from her ear so she could watch the call end, the red button flashing at her with the total six minutes of the call. Jesus. Six minutes and it felt like seconds and also somehow like a month – how had she gone so long without talking to him? How had they slipped right back into a cadence that felt as easy as breathing after all the emotional turmoil she’d suffered through the summer? All she could figure is that, as usual, Clint was towing the social lubricant rope and that for his end of things it hadn’t been quite so dire. The thought hurt, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

Of course it would have been easier for him. He probably grieved briefly like a normal person and then moved on. He was probably happy, this dinner some sort of closure.

“Flight 221 to Los Angeles, now boarding Priority Passengers.”

As she pulled her bag over her shoulder and grabbed her rolling case, she contemplated her life in California. The friendships she’d cultivated with Claire, Jane and especially Jess had been unexpected and wonderful; it didn’t replace missing Wanda and Maria but if nothing else this back and forth meant more chances to spend time with them too. Bucky and Steve were a warm, cozy place to land when the world got too heavy and she couldn’t deny the little smile she had to push back when she thought of the two of them. Sooner or later she’d have to reckon with herself about exactly how close to ‘love’ this was going to get, knowing she was starting to bump up against the edges of a feeling far more serious than she’d been looking to have, but there was no panic about this in a surprise turn of events. They were safe. Stable. It had never once been easy for Natasha to talk about her feelings but they certainly gave her the option without agenda. Her beautiful office, overlooking the ocean. Her connections, growing every day.

Hell, Salacious West Coast was doing spectacularly given the cost-benefit analysis of a place so big and expensive. Margot Robbie had come in two weeks prior, taken her picture with Jess and a delighted Jane, and bought two of her friends their first luxury vibrators. Howard Stern had given the shop a shout out on his show. The website was getting almost three hundred times the traffic nowadays. Tony’s hunt for a webmaster had come to a screeching halt for the time being and all that work was outsourced to a side company, one less thing on their plates to worry about, but that would need to be resumed as soon as possible.

Still, there was a fine layer of ice-numbness over her entire psyche. Natasha thrived in chaos, performed beautifully under pressure. It was something of a point of pride for her. Most people would panic under the kind of freefall that Nat often did her best work in, and her ability to think clearly through a crisis had certainly come in handy over the last few weeks if not the entirety of her life.

This was a consistent pattern, after all. Matt and his bare, embarrassing emotions when she had broken up with him. Clint’s open-faced honesty about their relationship, from start to finish. Maria with her concise and pointed way. Natasha certainly didn’t think of herself as duplicitous or a liar, but she sure as hell didn’t feel as unblocked as all these people around her seemed to be. Emotional constipation. Gross.

Handing over her ticket and id, she pulled a distracted smile for the clerk and then shuffled on her way.

At the rate she was flying, she was going to have to go back to flying coach. There was no justifying this expense, no matter how nice Tony wanted to be. She’d admittedly miss the legroom but it would be worth it in the long run.

After all, now was the time to streamline if there’d ever been one.

 

 


	2. American Booty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I take it you liked your fridge surprise then?” Steve asked through a strained voice, both of his hands going into Natasha’s mussed hair as he leaned back against the kitchen counter._
> 
> _Natasha moaned an affirmative around the length of his cock, knees planted in the thankfully plush mat instead of the tile, pulling back just enough to tease the reddened head with her slick lips when she talked._
> 
> _“Call Bucky, make him come home.”_
> 
> Natasha returns home to find someone's been in her apartment, and the emotional chain reaction it sets off does not end where she might have expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't typically read these or follow me on Tumblr (@noccalula-writes), let me give you the shortest version of events:
> 
> For the last five months I've been struggling with a mystery illness that has just about shut me down. I'm in the process of getting diagnosed so I can start looking at treatment options, and that starts today (after five months of other doctors, specialists, ER visits, neurologists, testing - MRI's and an MRV, etc - it's been exhausting) with my first appt with my otoneurologist. As a result of this, I may be out of commission for a little while as I work on treatment options. 
> 
> You were all so incredibly patient with me during Lascivious - so many life changes that interfered with my writing on that one - and I'm asking for more of the same here as this is something I can't help or change without significant medical intervention. 
> 
> That said, there is more coming, I'm going to attempt to keep my consistent every-other-week schedule, but if there's a hiccup, now you now why. 
> 
> <3  
> Noccalula

Salacious West Coast was thriving beautifully despite all the chaos. The store was so stunning that Natasha had been contacted by a few architectural magazines based out of Santa Clarita asking if the LLC would be interested in letting them photograph the building. That offer had been pushed onto the backburner along with several other line items by the time Natasha had pulled the staff together for an emergency meeting to tell them what had happened in New York. Almost everyone offered to take more shifts or double their time. Natasha had pulled Jess aside and told her in no uncertain terms that she wanted her acting as head manager while she was gone, a few quickly typed guides to some of the practices she might have had questions about on her desktop. Full use of the office, the power to make schedules – she put all of it in the capable hands of Jessica Jones and told her she trusted her.

That trust had not let her down. If Jess was struggling, she was hiding it extraordinarily well behind the usual veneer of displeasure she had about life at large. Nat made a note to get some private time with her, make sure she wasn’t flailing quietly on her own.

For her own sanity she’d gone straight home, taken an evening to be alone in her apartment with the quiet and all the plants on the back porch. Her neighbor in had been generously setting their re-planted trimmings over onto her side, generously nudging her towards plant parenthood. She wondered if they saw the irony that they still ended up watering them more than she ever did now that she was gone half the time; she’d warned them about her well-fabled black thumb of death where it came to live plants, but they seemed determined to make a plant mom of her yet.

The back and forth in temperature was wreaking havoc on her sinuses. New York wasn’t full tilt cold just yet but it was getting chillier at night, the graceful shift of seasons completely lost on California. When she returned to her warm salt water air it wasn’t a relief per se but at least here she was less likely to foster a cold. Between the airplane exposure and the consistent switching of climates, she found herself having headaches and even the odd nosebleed.

The only solution she was willing to take a jab at was crushing up vitamin c tablets and pounding them back pre and post flight. Between the preliminary visits, the abortion itself and the follow ups (making sure her uterus was truly vacant and her cervix closed, then finally to put in a new IUD), she was fine never seeing a doctor again. It was going to take pneumonia or the bubonic plague to get her back into an office anytime soon.

Even the inside of her apartment smelled enough like the ocean that she could close her eyes and really bask in the reality that she was back on the west coast. Laying on the Crate and Barrel couch she would have never bought for herself – thanks, Tony – she did just that, ruminating on the fact that she’d never expected California to feel anything like home and while it didn’t occupy the slot that New York would always own, it certainly made an unexpected mark. The apartment felt like refuge now from the maelstrom of what her life had become and would need to be until some stasis was found.

Tony would eventually stabilize out enough to take the reins again, hopefully around the time they had a finalized decision about what to do with the store site. Then, Natasha could get back to finishing out her term here and then… what? Go back to New York, where not only was her erstwhile former lover going to be again soon but where the very store she had her nexus in was gone? The first leg of living in California had been bearable because it felt like a means to an end, a sentence to be served – _poor me,_ Natasha thought, _serving my sentence in a paid for apartment one street up from the beach and running my successful business from my gorgeous office_ – before she could go back to New York and resume her life.

Only now it was beginning to dawn on her: what life was she resuming?

Wanda and Maria and Tony, her closest and most beloved, were all there but who knew for how long? If Clint had served to remind her of anything it was that people were not geography; they are not fixed points in the universe. They can move or blink out of existence in the drop of a hat. New York City was half of her heart but was that enough to keep her there if a life she was building in California began to feel more like home?

Perishing that thought with a scowl on her face, Natasha tossed a throw pillow onto the floor and groaned as she rose up to go raid the freezer, unsure if she had even left anything behind after the last trip. Pulling open the ergonomically superior handle – at least she hoped it was somehow ergonomically designed and made out of something appropriately fancy given how goddamn much money she knew this thing had cost – she rubbed at a faint but burgeoning migraine. Blinking in surprise, she furrowed her brow and stared for a moment.

Her freezer was packed with Ben and Jerry’s, Halo Top and pints of Jeni’s ice cream (Nidali Estate Vanilla and Goat Cheese with Cherries, her favorites when it wasn’t Super Moon season), and Morningstar faux-ribs. After a long pause during which she convinced herself she wasn’t hallucinating, Natasha pulled open the fridge to find it packed with all the seasonal fruits and vegetables she would commonly find at the farmer’s market. A bowl of still-unripe avocados sat on the lower shelf, wedged between two champagne mangos and a papaya.

On the very bottom of the shelf, a six pack of Dr. Brown’s root beer.

Turning to stare at her table like she was maybe expecting to see a murder scene instead, Natasha found a loaf of fresh bread wrapped in cheesecloth, beneath a glass dome.

There was only one explanation for who in California had both a key to her apartment – for plant watering purposes, she’d impressed – and that level of dedication to fresh food and presentation, and it sure as shit wasn’t Jessica.

~~~

“I take it you liked your fridge surprise then?” Steve asked through a strained voice, both of his hands going into Natasha’s mussed hair as he leaned back against the kitchen counter.

Natasha moaned an affirmative around the length of his cock, knees planted in the thankfully plush mat instead of the tile, pulling back just enough to tease the reddened head with her slick lips when she talked.

“Call Bucky, make him come home.”

She wrapped her lips back around the crown, tonguing him softly, and Steve squinched up his face in something like concentration through the pleasure as he gestured uncertainly with one hand.

“Oh, no can do,” he sighed, smoothing the other palm along her cheek as he groped blindly for his phone on the counter, “ _But_ , I can do this.”

Nat didn’t pause, bobbing down further along his length as she heard him put the call on speaker and set the phone back down. It was a few short rings and a few sweet little groans from Steve before his husband answered the phone.

“Yeah babe?” he sounded distracted, but the sound of his voice made Natasha smile with a dick in her mouth, so that was something.

“You might wanna get somewhere private and listen for a minute, Buck,” Steve’s voice dragged sweet and raw along the words, “We’ve got a guest at the house.”

Natasha moaned loudly for affirmation of her presence and Bucky’s breath hitched, plain as day on the other end of the line. He chuckled low and warm and she thought she heard a door open and close somewhere in the fuzz of the connection.

“Welcome back, Natasha,” Bucky nearly purred, “You wanna put on a quick show for me? I can take my twenty now but you’ll have to make it fast.”

Again, Steve groped for the phone. Ever diligently working at his cock with her mouth, Natasha watched with the faintest smirk as the light came on. Bless modern technology for all its worth. Steve angled the camera just so and she knew he’d hit a good spot when his tongue darted out to wet his lower lip, his head falling back just so.

“Ohmygod,” he exhaled, “Look at her, she’s so fucking perfect…”

“I’m lookin’,” Bucky sighed back, and Natasha could hear the squeaking of an office chair, “You gonna watch me or her?”

Bucky laughed and Natasha nearly did the same, slipping him from her mouth to run her tongue along the seam of his balls, the bare-shaven skin so soft and smooth that she couldn’t help but kiss along it open-mouthed. Steve groaned louder, free hand tangling into her hair as his eyes darted from the phone screen to Nat kneeled in front of him. Clearly spoiled for things to look at, he laughed soft as his head lolled back and something about this was so stupidly endearing that she reached a hand up to rub it warmly over his abs, a piece of affection she didn’t give out freely.

As if he knew this even through all the distractions, Steve slipped his free hand across hers to stroke it warmly. It was amazingly pleasant for the barest of seconds before that prickle of alarm crept through her scalp, any stronger and it might have put a hitch in her blowjob.

“God, I missed you,” Steve murmured soft, and a wrenching at Natasha’s stomach forced her to take a deep breath through her nose, assume he was talking to Bucky, and swallow him down deeper if only to shut him up.

Blessedly, Steve pressed to reverse the viewfinder and flipped the phone around so she could watch Bucky stroking his long, gorgeous cock, the pink glint of his tongue along his lower lip every so often reminding her of how greedy and talented that mouth was. The memory of something like this – Steve laying back on the bed while Natasha sucked his cock on her knees and elbows while Bucky kneeled behind her, face deep in her pussy and humming in satisfaction as he licked up and swallowed every drop of her – thrummed at her clit until she had worked one hand into her panties to rub some relief into the matter.

“Put her on the table and fuck her,” Bucky near ordered, his voice breathless, “Steve, give it to her. You want it don’t you, red?”

“Fuck,” Steve gasped as Natasha moaned around him and forced herself down deeper, letting him hit the back of her throat, “Nat?”

“Look at her rubbin’ her pussy, Steve, she needs it. She’s hurtin’ for it. You gotta give it to her, baby, she needs that cock.”

Natasha nearly came listening to him babble, having to still her fingers forcibly to avoid it; the way Steve’s cock twitched and throbbed in her mouth told her he wasn’t far away either. Pulling off his length with a succinct pop, spit running down her chin just enough that she had to wipe it with her hand, Nat spoke through her throatfucked voice.

“Cum in my mouth, I wanna taste it,” she croaked, “That’s what I need.”

“Aw, c’mon red,” Bucky growled, his own fist pumping harder and faster as they stared at one another through the screen, “You tellin’ me you wouldn’t rather get fucked nice and deep?”

“I can come like this,” she insisted at Steve, eyes finding his instead since she knew who she was actually negotiating with, “I want to.”

Through the screen and however many miles away, Bucky was none the wiser to any changes in the temperature of the room. Steve on the other hand was far more observant and she could see it at the edges of his eyes, glinting above his reddened cheeks as he peered down at her with cautious concern.

Knowing full well that sensing something was even slightly wrong would wilt Steve’s erection faster than she could save it, Natasha dove full force back onto him mouth-first until he reflexively tightened his hand back at her scalp. His surprised gasp and groan sent a chill down her spine and she squeezed her left thumb to deep throat him without gagging – not something she objected to on occasion but a definite no for Steve, who hated the sensation.

Steve pulled back just enough as blurry, vague ribbons of semen spurted across Bucky’s shirt, his moaning giving him away. Rubbing fast bordering on frantic, Natasha came with a jolt of her hips as she tasted Steve burst on her tongue. He caught her eyes as she stuck it out just enough to show him before she swallowed it down, shifting to relieve the ache in her hips and thighs from the position.

Steve tucked himself back in gently and glanced at the screen, his hair disheveled and his face flushed pink and red, “You good, Buck?”

“Fuck, I gotta find another shirt,” he muttered exhaustedly, “Lemme let you go, thanks guys, love you see you later.”

“Loveyaseeyalater,” Steve responded in one breath, their usual closing greeting, as he pressed End and turned his attention back to Natasha. She grabbed onto his legs to pull herself up but he quickly dipped down, grabbing her hands.

Once she was up, she let go immediately. Being helped up from the floor.

He peered at her sidelong, watching her adjust her skirt and chewing on his lip before he spoke, “Can I at least repay the favor?”

Tucking her mussed hair behind her ears, Natasha was already stepping into her shoes when she glanced up at him. The orgasm had been great as usual and god knows she hadn’t done a single thing she didn’t want to do in this kitchen, but somehow the idea of fucking Steve, being prostrate on the table or bent over the counter had struck her as a level of vulnerability she was suddenly hyper aware of getting too close to. In fact, the weird feeling that had settled into her stomach on the ride over to Steve and Bucky’s place was back with full force.

She looked at the hesitation on his face, his hands gripping the counter’s edge behind him as though he needed to find something to do with them. In a way, she was grateful he was keeping them to himself; she felt like an exposed nerve, unable to be touched without consequence, and she knew that shirking away from him would hurt him.

“Steve,” she started, forcibly preventing herself from crossing her arms or looking away in a full-bodied effort to not make him think she was in any way angry at him, “What you did for me was so thoughtful and considerate, but…”

Steve waited for the other shoe to drop, nodding at her to continue as he watched her with clear concern.

She hated the way that made her feel.

“This is going to seem like I’m such a shithead and like I’m not grateful to you but could you just…” she swept one hand back over her hair, almost wincing as she managed to look him in the eyes again, “Maybe not go into my apartment without telling me anymore? I didn’t realize it was going to bother me so much, I swear to god it’s not you, it’s me, I-“

“Natasha,” he put his hands up, cutting her off so softly she was amazed it worked at all and giving her that look that somehow made her feel worse, “You don’t owe me an explanation. At all. All you have to say is ‘don’t’ and I won’t.”

“But this is so fucking shitty,” she started, shaking her head as her gaze fell somewhere in the middle of his legs, “I wish I could explain this to you the right way but I-“

“ _Natasha_ ,” he said it again, just as gently, and she looked back at him to find not a trace of anger or confusion, “I get it but I don’t have to get it. All it takes is you telling me what the boundary is and I respect it, the end.”

By Natasha’s estimation, if someone gave you a key and you used it to do something nice for them and then they got angry at you, there was zero reason not to call them out for it. All he and Bucky had been doing was looking out for her and here she was, telling them both to fuck off in so many words for their kindness. The repulsion she felt to get out of the apartment and back down onto the street was an even mix of confusion that Steve truly did not seem hurt or angry in any way and the fact that she was both hurt and angry at herself. Why did she feel like this? What was the goddamn problem here?

“I gotta go,” Nat finally said after what felt like a blue eternity of staring at him, “Tell Bucky I’m sorry, okay?”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Steve insisted, which sent her out the door faster.

~~~

Though she felt no less weird about the entire thing, Natasha had to admit to herself that the restock had certainly been advantageous. The irony that she was tucked deep in one of the Jeni’s pints – Goat Cheese with Cherries, of course – as she tried to get a bead on exactly what it was about this that had her so goddamn upset was not lost on her as she sat in front of her computer, watching Tony shift around some papers on his shockingly clean desk.

Given the recent events, she figured he might have a new aversion to paper clutter that might not be so terrible for everyone but his own psyche.

“They sent in the figures for the claim today, and it’s a fuckin’ doozy,” Tony shook his head, his webcam so smooth it was like he sat right in front of her, “This whole thing is wild.”

“Wild but not surprising, right?” she asked with no small twinge of concern, “No surprises on that?”

Tony raised his eyebrows and laughed humorlessly, “The only surprise is that the amount is even higher than I was already expecting. They’re gonna give us more than enough to rebuild, Nat. We can either sell off the lot and pick up something bigger, or we can rebuild our flagship where the old one stood.”

This was a lot to take in at once. The final quote from the insurance wasn’t supposed to come back quite so quickly but it had surprised everyone involved – including Pepper – when it did.

“Now, we were planning a fifteen-k remodel in the new year if you recall, namely because of all the bullshit with the wiring, and I was finally gonna rip up all that goddamn carpet but we can sink that same amount into this money and just go for a bigger rebuild altogether, vanity project and all. Match it up with West Coast a little bit but keep some of the same flair.”

Natasha tried to picture this but couldn’t, frowning as she jabbed the spoon into the ice cream.

Catching the look, Tony quickly added, “With a lot of the original style retained so it’s not an eyesore, I mean. Keep some consistency in the architecture but keep it brick, maybe more industrial chic? I dunno, we’ve got a little time before we get there.”

“This sounds a lot like you’ve already got your mind made up, Tony.”

“Not at all,” he quickly countered as he flipped pages in a legal pad distractedly, “And sorry if it did, I’m not making this or any big decisions without you, I’ve just been running scenarios all afternoon to see if the wind blows one way or another for my gut. But, the reason I’m not sold to push for that is because…”

He clicked away at a few buttons and a link popped up in her messenger, a real estate listing.

“There’s a second location I’ve been eyeballing anyway, and it may end up costing us less altogether to renovate this than it will to rebuild and re-code the old site, or to buy a new plot and rebuild from scratch. All three are doable, it’s just picking the one that makes the most sense.”

“May?” Natasha asked as she eyed the link to an already existing building in a decent looking strip of brownstone businesses, “What was this before, a brewery?”

“A brewery or a coffeehouse, this is Brooklyn, you can safely assume one or another.”

The speed at which Tony was talking made her wonder if he was off his Ritalin again. He wasn’t quite manic but he certainly had channeled that laser focus into the one arena of his life where he wasn’t feeling utterly helpless, a feeling she knew down to her bones. Sometimes you just had to grab on to whatever you could get your hands around.

“Anyway, there’s a lot of hemming and hawing to be done about the process but to be honest, we could do it over Skype,” he concluded, letting the question hang unspoken at the end.

“Tony, I’ll come back,” Natasha said with some trace amount of tiredness though she very much so meant it, “We’ll taper back off soon but not until we’ve finalized a deal yet.”

Not to mention, Clint’s imminent return to the city had complicated the matter. Staying in California would have been a perfect way to avoid the whole thing but so help her, she found herself too curious about what he was going to say, where he had been, what he looked like now. This was an opportunity her better senses told her to ditch out on but her heart wasn’t convinced. There were a thousand excuses – Wanda’s pregnancy being one – but the big decisions regarding the business were the surest ones to keep her going back until she felt satisfied about the whole situation.

Tony looked immediately relieved and she knew it was the right call regardless of her personal drama. In that moment she remembered how much he had been floundering on his own in all of this.

“Thank god, I wasn’t ready to have all of this back on my plate just yet,” he paused, his eyes cutting away from the camera almost shamefully before he brought them back, “You do know how grateful I am for you, right? Even I didn’t know how much until this happened. I mean, I thought I did but it’s a whole other ball game when your entire life starts falling apart again and you know you’ve got someone you can put your back to.”

“Weren’t you just helping me through my personal crisis?” Natasha half-smiled warmly at him, wishing she could squeeze his hand.

“Yeah, well, I’d take an unplanned pregnancy and subsequent abortion over the business burning down. I think I win this round for sheer drama factor.”

Nat laughed, setting her pint down. He did have that in spades if nothing else.

“Oh, uh…” Tony began fishing around in his pocket, “I actually have something you might be interested in doing while you’re here, one of the local dungeons reached out to me and offered to do a fundraiser. Apparently we serve a big chunk of their clientele.”

“Concupiscence. Right, I remember a lot of their doms using the community board.”

“Yeah, concu-something, you know the one,” he successfully pulled out the card, smacking it down onto the desktop, “Anyway, they want to put together a fundraiser for Salacious.”

Of course, Tony’s purposeful presence didn’t permeate all the way down onto the streets and apparently, not everyone was aware that he was a millionaire to start with. Natasha immediately grimaced on the inside at the thought of the news getting out that Salacious had accepted community funds when their insurance cup had runneth over enough that they could have their pick of actions now.

“Did you tell them you’re rich and we’re insured?”

Tony almost laughed, “No, Natasha, I’m gonna take their money. Then I’m gonna hit the next borough over and steal from all the communion plates. Of course I fucking told them we were good but it’s also bad praxis to say no to community involvement so I told them we could work something out for charity. Maria’s clinic, maybe?”

Given that this was going to be Natasha’s next suggestion, she nodded, “That’s what I was thinking. Donate all proceeds to Planned Parenthood, use the event to drum up excitement for the new store if we push it out far enough.”

“By all means, push it as far back as you want. I know you’ve got some event planning under your belt now but I know it’s not your favorite thing to do either.” Tony wriggled his eyebrows, plucking at a cord on his desk. “I mean, you’re surprisingly good at it whether you like it or not, but…”

Natasha snorted, groaning as she rolled her eyes, “God, no, I’ll help get this one off the ground but I don’t care how good the expo or the barbeque were, I’m fine never fucking doing it again.”

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown-type thing, Nat.”

“I’ll set up a meeting when I get there, just get the preliminaries. Hopefully they’ll be okay with running this thing largely without us.”

“Cool, while you’re there can you pick me up a femme domme?”

Natasha rolled her eyes again, closing the lid on her ice cream, “Sure, Tony. I’ll grab a dom on my way out the door.”

As the Skype call chirped its end, she grunted from the exertion of pushing back her chair and took a nice, long stretch. The apartment was quiet and dim, the perpetually-on salt lamps that had started to grow on her keeping the lighting warm and low, and while half of her still wanted to crawl under a rock after her encounter with Steve she was relieved to have some quiet and solitude back. There would be a way to make that up to him. Apologize to him and Bucky for being so touchy – except that thought was immediately met with the reminder that _it did still bother_ _her_ whether she liked it or not that they’d come into the apartment to stock food. What a shitty thing to be weird about. Goddamn.

Putting away the ice cream, Natasha pulled open the fridge half to inspect the fruit offerings, not quite full for the evening but knowing her limits on rich foods. The gnawing at her gut wasn’t from hunger, reminding her that she still had something of a tangled ball of yarn to sort out about all of this. Sure, it could be as easy as “we agreed you could have a key to do a, and you used the key and came in and did a and b and this makes me uncomfortable because I need to know what to expect,” but when had it ever been that simple to figure out or overcome?

Naturally, this would be a thread she’d need to tug on ad nauseam until she made herself sick of thinking about it. Talking to Jess or Wanda came to mind but they both had their own problems right now and didn’t need to hear Natasha whine about how unsettling it is when someone is nice to her.

Glancing down, her eyes caught the gleaming brown of the root beer cans and for just an instant, she was standing back in her apartment in New York. She could smell the brownstone, a mix of lemon cleaner and a candle burning on the coffee table. Her hands tingled as she remembered pulling open the shitty fridge a thousand times to do just this – look around for a snack and notice the constantly in-flux root beer. Dr Brown’s was the best brand she’d tried and eventually she’d gotten Clint to give it a whirl, changing his lifelong indifference to the stuff into a fanaticism equal to her own. They were constantly on watch to replenish the six packs when one of them could make the trek to Fresh Market, the only place they could find it for cheap. One time, Clint ordered a bulk of it on Amazon for thirty dollars and it had come in a total mess, all the cans askew from their plastic rings and haphazardly shoved into the box.

But they had counted, and there were in fact 32 of them as promised.

The only person aside from herself who had ever stocked her fridge before was Clint.

_Oh_.

 

 


	3. Assablanca

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I admit, I’d have thought you’d have come sooner, considering.” Heimdall gestured at Natasha vaguely, crossing his legs to put an ankle at his knee._  
>  Natasha laughed small and shook her head, setting her glass down on a coaster. “Oh, I’ve been told I’d make a good dom, but I don’t know if I’ve-“  
> “Oh, no,” he corrected, hand up, “I meant as a client.”  
> In which Natasha is affronted by the suggestion that she might be subby.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y'all. 
> 
> My tumblr holds all the explanations for where I've been for the last six months but in case you missed it, I very suddenly developed a serious chronic illness last September and the previous year has been super, super rough. 
> 
> If I may direct you to this [post](http://noccalula-writes.tumblr.com/post/178930204148/okay-salacious-various-frank-smut-church), links for both my paypal.me and ko-fi are there. I write these long, complicated stories out of so much love for the characters, and if you enjoy what I do, please consider donating. We got hit hard by this illness and we're struggling. 
> 
> We now return to our regularly scheduled Natasha, and thank you all so much for your patience. I appreciate you.

The stereotype of a dungeon looking like a city-block warehouse lived on strong in New York City, namely since everything looked like a warehouse. Breweries, coffeehouses, baby clothing stores, dispensaries – anything that didn’t need to look like it belonged on Fifth Ave was festooned in industrial brick and exposed pipes and Edison bulbs. Dungeons had been doing it for longer, though, and Natasha was in no way surprised when she arrived on foot at what looked like it might have once been a butchery in the meatpacking district. The one she’d expected was in Brooklyn but apparently this dungeon held their offices, a novel thought to anyone who didn’t know how dungeons worked and didn’t realize how much paperwork went into maintaining it like any other independent business.

Pulling her sunglasses up into her messy hair, Natasha squinted in the afternoon sun and banged on the metal door until a manbun in sandals let her in with nary a hitch in his pleasant demeanor, as casual as if she were bringing in pizza. The space looked unlike whatever it was she’d been imagining – no dim red lighting, no smell of sweat and alcohol, no pounding bass rocking the walls. Dungeons in the daylight were not unlike movie theaters with all the lights on – not the setting most would imagine when they first pictured these locales. Like seeing a bar in the morning, natural light in a place known for its darkness.

Of course, Natasha had passed through a dungeon or two in her day, but most of her impression of them was informed by pop culture. She knew enough latex fetishists to know the messy, cornstarch-y ins and outs - both literal and figurative - of that sect. There were doms, dommes, femdommes, daddy doms, subs, switches – a set of slang that was a language unto itself for the uninitiated. Some light bondage play and being otherwise bossy had always been part of Natasha’s repertoire in her personal life but The Scene itself had always seemed a little excessive, too much pomp and circumstance to appeal to her more spartan sensibilities. The idea of the showmanship, the leather, the fetish heels all left her cold; it was lovely to look at in the right mood but otherwise did nothing for her.

“Well, it’s been a long time, but I knew I’d eventually get you to the dungeon.”

Heimdall met her at the office door with a small, wry smile, his long locs pulled back away from his face. They’d met before at a convention where Natasha and Whitney had ran a table to promote the business, back when Salacious was still but an upstart. His easy smile and honey-colored eyes had Natasha hooked from the word go but her meager pursuit didn’t get her anywhere and she didn’t see him again for years, only exchanging greetings through customers of both the store and the dungeon. When Tony had said Concupiscence had reached out, she knew exactly who to expect.

“Finally, sorry I forgot my latex catsuit,” Natasha reached out to hug him, which he warmly received before pulling back enough to study her face.

“Are you all doing alright over there? A fire is scary as hell, even if everyone got out.”

“I am, but thank you for checking.” Natasha couldn’t shake the feeling that he was looking into her, already picking up on the poorly balanced tower of her own emotions despite how well she wore her cool countenance, “It’ll be better once we decide for sure what we’re doing.”

“Well, maybe I can help make that decision a little easier,” Heimdall offered, gesturing towards the desk and chairs behind him. It looked like any other office only a little warmer, the dark wood furniture and mulberry walls giving it a cozy feel that was strange in context of the warehouse. “I’m not Tony, but if I was, I believe I’d just relocate instead of building from scratch. There’s plenty of abandoned spaces in this city that could use revitalization.”

By rote of his reputation, Natasha knew that Heimdall had his hands in more than one charitable effort, sponsoring pop up clinics and STD/STI screenings in the name of the dungeon. Another man offering his advice unprompted might have made Natasha tell him to fuck off, but his wasn’t without its weight of consideration. “Thank you, Heimdall, I’ll pass that along to Tony. I admit neither one of us has a solid gameplan at the moment but we’re getting there.”

“Of course. Drink? I have water unless you’re feeling some brandy.”

Natasha tilted her head to look over at his drink cart. Classy, old school brass and glass with an ice bucket and everything. It made her smile in earnest as she shook her head, “Water’s fine but thank you, your office is gorgeous.”

“Well, I have to provide a place where my contractors feel comfortable coming to me when they need to talk,” he explained as he carefully poured a water pitcher into a glass. “You know my thinking on this one, if I take care of them they take care of their clients and by extension, me.”

“Gotta admit, I was surprised you didn’t have gear on display in here,” Natasha admitted, taking the glass from him with a ‘thank you’ while he went to settle into his chair, “The last dungeon I went to was nothing but gimp masks from wall to wall.”

Heimdall chuckled. “Oh, that’s only on Tuesday nights.”

“Well, either way, I’m impressed.” Natasha traced fingers across the grooves in the glass, resting it on her crossed legs. “And thank you for the offer, I’m sure there’s more than one clinic out there who’s going to be delighted to get the money. We’ll match whatever the turnout donation is.”

“Always a class act, that Salacious,” Heimdall smiled, “I’ve been impressed from the first meeting.”

Giving him more of a lingering smirk than was smart for a business meeting, Natasha fought the urge to press the matter into more flirtatious territory. He was gorgeous, all dark skin and cut muscles and a sort of self-possession that rivaled her own, but this was a business venture and her personal life had gotten stupidly complicated enough. When had all her hookups gotten so tangled up in strings?

When had all her hookups been reduced to two people?

“I admit, I’d have thought you’d have come sooner, considering.” Heimdall gestured at Natasha vaguely, crossing his legs to put an ankle at his knee.

Natasha laughed small and shook her head, setting her glass down on a coaster. “Oh, I’ve been told I’d make a good dom, but I don’t know if I’ve-“

“Oh, no,” he corrected, hand up, “I meant as a client.”

A beat of silence passed as Natasha processed whether or not that comment had actually wounded her pride. After all, the dungeon employed dominants as well as submissives, even some switches on their roster.

“I don’t mean to overstep, just an observation.” Heimdall continued, glancing over Natasha’s shoulder out into the open warehouse beyond the door. “When you run something like a dungeon as long as I have, you get an eye for people’s needs, especially the ones they don’t say out loud. Kind of a specialty of Concupiscent’s, our ‘matchmaking’ skills.”

Natasha waited a beat, feeling the rise of defensiveness at the back of her throat and though she did her best to remain unphased, even she caught the slight change in her tone. “And what makes you think I’d want to come as a client?”

Heimdall rested that golden gaze on her for a moment and it felt too vulnerable, too naked; Natasha felt herself almost physically recoil from the feeling of being seen. True to form though, he quickly changed his expression to a warm smile and softened his countenance. She might not have had his powers of insight but Nat knew a reassuring gesture when she saw one.

“Oh, I don’t know that you’d _want_ to,” he chuckled, standing up to collect her glass, “But if you decide you do, I know exactly who I’d pair you with.”

~~~

Being in New York meant getting in as much time as possible with Wanda when the two of them weren’t otherwise occupied with work concerns. Originally it had been almost solely to monitor Tony, keep an eye on his mental state and sobriety; Claudia was quick to get him back in with the lovely Ms. Page and apparently had him attending meetings again, ‘just for a tuneup’ as Tony explained. He swore up and down he’d stayed sober and Natasha believed him; while she’d never known Tony during his substance abuse issues, it wasn’t hard to imagine that when he was drinking or using it would be far too excessive to be hidden well. Grateful for the stabilizing force of his relationship, Nat made a mental note to get in some time to at least tell Claudia how much she appreciated her.

Wanda’s face already seemed somehow softer, a little rounder at the jaw than she remembered. She wasn’t showing by any stretch though it wouldn’t be long now; she was nearly 11 weeks along and the first trimester would be over by Halloween. The seasons changing meant a cool chill finally hit the air at night and the days were far more pleasant, Wanda’s perpetually cold body wrapped in a cozy looking burgundy sweater as she and Natasha sat on the patio at Cantina.

“I mean, you were the one who told me some people use it as therapy,” Wanda offered, picking up her glass bottle of fancy cream soda since mezcal wouldn’t be an option for some time, “Perhaps he thinks you could benefit from smacking some fool around?”

Nat considered, raising an eyebrow at the notion before working on her beer. “I can’t imagine any other scenario he’d be talking about. I’ve been told since before I got into this industry that I should have been a dominatrix.”

“Not too late,” Wanda sing-songed, picking up a tortilla chip to swirl about in the salsa, “Is something you could in just one session, maybe? You might as well go see what it is all about. ‘Reduce your stress’, that’s what the doctor is always telling me.”

A smile tugged Nat’s lips into a curl and she looked at her friend softly. “She’s a good one, right? You’re happy with the staff?”

“Very much so, yes,” Wanda smiled back, her round eyes lighting up.

Wanda had worn such a perpetually sullen-looking expression when they first met, even past the point of their friendship beginning, that it was hard to reconcile the pout, the blank face with the smiles and the warmth and the sure-enough glow that was about her now. Wanda’s hair looked full and shiny, her skin radiant. She seemed happier than Nat had ever seen her, sometimes smiling for no reason as she looked off into the distance. Pregnancy suited her gorgeously, and while Natasha had long since abandoned any designs on her that weren’t platonic, she couldn’t help the way her heart picked up a little at the sight of how beautiful she was.

“You look amazing, by the way. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

“I am cooking a baby,” Wanda responded with her trademark droll, though the smile didn’t wane as she gestured towards her middle. “It’s the best hair care I’ve ever done, apparently. Pietro tangles himself up in it like a magpie all night, he is delighted.”

Natasha’s expression softened further as she imagined Pietro happily wrapped around Wanda in bed: holding her stomach, petting her hair, overjoyed and sweet and scared all in equal measure about the choice they were making. Somehow that feeling only drove home that Natasha had made the right choice for herself – she couldn’t picture the same of her, Steve and Bucky. Perfectly plausible, she knew, they’d have been over the moon about a baby in the right circumstances, but the idea only left her feeling as alarmed as she had when she first saw that little blue plus sign on the first test.

Shifting in her seat, Natasha rested her elbow on the table, chin in her hand, “And you? How are you feeling?”

Wanda opened her mouth but paused, casting a quick sidelong glance at the passing waiter before lowering her voice just so. “I am alright, I’ve been doing research and the big problems are more so from…” she gestured vaguely, “Generational. That was enough for Pietro to stop worrying but you know me, always to worry.”

“Also read the same stuff, also agree that you shouldn’t worry so much,” Nat countered with a half-smile and raised her glass, “But here’s to another eighteen years of worrying all the time, because that’s exactly what you signed up for.”

Wanda laughed loud and open, more and more unguarded every single time Nat got to spend time with her, and it made her ache for how badly she missed her when she was back in California. The friends she’d made there were amazing, but perhaps by rote of the secrets they’d shared, there was nobody else like Wanda. Speaking of.

“So, when you gonna tell Tony?”

Wanda stopped laughing and sighed, not quite dour but certainly less light. “Oh, I don’t know… is it too much to hope that I can just pretend I’m growing fat in the middle only?”

Natasha chuckled, wadding up her straw wrapper, “You could try but he’s not entirely oblivious, our Tony.”

“I know it, believe me,” Wanda raised her eyebrows and sighed again, watching a waiter balance plates on his way to a larger table, “But to tell him the truth is also to lie to him, and I already put myself in a position by telling him Pietro is my brother.”

“You could always tell him that was a lie, that he was your boyfriend but you had to lie about it to get out of Sokovia. Or something, I don’t know.” Natasha twisted the ever-condensing bottle in her hand as she sucked her teeth, considering, gears ever working. “I mean, you could tell him he’s your stepbrother and that’s why you had to take off, because people wouldn’t understand your relationship.”

Wanda’s mouth tightened into a thin line as she drifted off into some distant memory that couldn’t have been pleasant. Natasha could speculate all day – perhaps a relative had discovered the truth about them, maybe even exposed them publicly – but whatever that dark place she sometimes had to return to, it was Wanda’s own and not any of Natasha’s business.

“Orrr,” Nat dragged out, raising her eyebrows suggestively, “You could tell him the truth. Like the real truth. I promise Tony won’t flip out.”

“No.” It was so decisive, complete with a shake of the head that sent her silky hair waving, that Natasha dropped it immediately, raising her hands defensively.

“Okay, so that’s a no, no big. There’s gotta be a story that’ll work for you. Shit, maybe just keep it simple – you’re pregnant, Pietro’s gonna help you raise the baby. Either way, he needs to know as soon as you can tell him so he can start making accommodations for you.”

“What about you?” Wanda redirected so effortlessly it nearly blew Nat’s hair back, her tone playful, “Are you going to go see the dominatrix or not while you’re here? That, I am interested in hearing all about.”

“Smooth,” Natasha laughed, not about to let that sequitur go past no matter how brilliant, “And I don’t fucking know, that sort of thing has never been up my alley. A little too performative for me.”

“You know,” Wanda began with the tone that suggested she already had an opinion, reaching for another couple chips, “They say it can be… what’s the word, like therapy? Therapeutic? A lot of people use it for those sorts of things instead of just sex.”

“Oh, look who’s been googling BDSM,” Nat teased, “Has the student become the master? I’m the one who told you that when you first started at the shop, smartass.”

Wanda, simultaneously trying not to laugh while cramming more nachos into her mouth, shook her head and carefully caught falling bits of salsa, narrowly saving her shirt and talking around a mouthful. “NO, I just had a lot of conversations with the clients who come in. It can be good for clarity, they say.”

The prickle of defensiveness that Natasha hadn’t noticed until that moment reared its head and she had to fight to keep it from changing the tone of the conversation. She could chalk it up to feeling talked down to on a subject she knew plenty about, but Wanda wasn’t talking down to anyone and she knew it. Still, something about the mere suggestion was making her uncomfortable enough that the defenses were raising, and while she knew there would need to be some soul searching later, now was for enjoying lunch with her friend.

“Excuse me,” Natasha stopped the waiter, gesturing towards Wanda, “Can we get some queso for our friend here?”

~~~

Natasha had laid out the details to Tony over dinner, Claudia conspicuously absent in what Natasha suspected was either an effort to give them some alone time or a need for some solo space herself. They had spread their takeout across the gorgeous white lacquered table and talked shop, cracked jokes, felt almost like their normal selves except for the fact that Natasha had a flight back to California in two days and Tony was in every-other-day therapy.

Concupiscent would host a charity exhibition night, with paid tickets to different echelons of the event and all drink sales going into a joint charity donation to a local free clinic that needed new equipment as well as funds for supplies. As it was a low publicity sort of event – plenty of fetishists were anonymous at the dungeon, of course - no one from Salacious was required to be present, though Natasha agreed that if she could be in New York at the time it’d be best to put in an appearance. This was marvelously low-impact for the brand and for Natasha by extension, by design she suspected as Heimdall had understood all too well the stress of trying to recover from business disaster.

The accord he’d sent over outlining the plans for donation had to be signed and returned, and somehow Tony managed to get his signature on it without leaving any sweet and sour sauce on the paper. By the time he was off to bed, Claudia home and the two of them sequestered off behind a closed door, Nat was at the desk in Tony’s home office, loading the scanned document to send back to Heimdall.

_Thank you again for this opportunity to help improve access to healthcare for the underserved. Also, thank you so much for your support of our brand and the encouragement we’ve received from Concupiscent and its community of clients. The BDSM community is always welcome at Salacious, wherever it may be._

Nat tapped her fingers nervously against the edge of the desk, holding her breath subconsciously before adding the line she’d typed and deleted three times now.

_And yes, I’ll take a referral for services. :)_

Was the smiley too much? Unprofessional? This email was between constituents, and Heimdall had referenced the offer in his original email. A smiley? Really? It was solely to take the edge off, Natasha didn’t use fucking emojis other than the poop coil at Tony or the occasional eggplant when a dick joke was all that would do. It felt out of character, strange – almost like asking for help.

That was it. The cold chill of realization hit her spine and the root of the anxiety she’d been feeling since she first scanned in the signed document was clear as day. It felt like asking for help.

She couldn’t. There were few things Natasha was wholly unwilling to do but ask for help was easily in the top three. Just as she poised her finger over the backspace button, her phone vibrated on the bedside table, a jarring noise in the otherwise relative silence. The spell broken, Nat climbed out of the chair with a groan and reached across to snag it from its charging cord.

Clint.

Fuck.

“Hey,” she answered in a way that immediately felt too casual, like they had spoken more than once in the subsequent half a year since they’d broken it off.

“Hey, you! Didn’t know if you were home or in Cali, hopefully I didn’t wake you?”

The warmth, the familiarity in his voice was like getting kicked in the ribs. The box at the top of the closet in California reminded her of this every day for a good three months before that jolt became so dull she almost didn’t process it anymore, but the sound of his voice? Straight to fight or flight. Before she realized she was doing it, she had her thumbnail between her teeth.

“No, no, I’m in New York but I’m up,” she offered dumbly, trying not to actively chew, “I’m at Tony’s, actually.”

“Yeah? How’s he doing?” Clint shifted positions with a little grunt of effort and Natasha could see him sprawled out on what used to be their couch, his boots hanging off as not to dirty it up, the muscles of him and the way his shirts hung on his shoulders. “Hanging in there?”

“He is, he is. I mean, he’s still kind of a mess, but he’s alright.” Natasha moved to sit in the windowsill, a narrow enough ledge to balance on as she looked out at the city from Tony’s ninth floor view. “It marches on, anyway, still got plenty of stuff to do.”

“Well,” Clint said as casually as if there were no nervousness, no effort on his part whatsoever beyond simply letting words fall out of his goddamn mouth, “I’d love to hear about it over dinner if you’re free sometime before you have to go back.”

A bomb whistling toward her from miles away, the sentence Natasha had known was coming since they first made contact again landed as gracefully as a swan onto a lake. Like it was nothing. How was all of this so easy for him? Why did she still have so many knots to untie when it sounded like Clint’s life was just as charmed as ever? And when did she lose her unaffected ways to the point that a phone call could give her that spike in her chest, the loudness of her heart in her ears?

“Of course. I’m free, uh…” Natasha reached for her computer and clicked the calendar, squinting to try to find a day with no previous engagements. “I’m free tomorrow evening and Wednesday afternoon.”

“I can do tomorrow,” Clint offered, his easy tone brightening a little, “Man, can you believe it’s been six months? I can’t wait to see you. You wanna meet at the ale house?”

“Sure.” Memories of how many nights they’d spent nearly mopping the place up with how late they’d been there came careening back and Nat bit her lip. “Six-ish?”

“Six-ish it is. You’ll know where to find me.”

There was a near-pause before Natasha recovered well enough to affirm. “Alright, yeah. See you tomorrow.”

“Awesome,” Clint was smiling, she could hear it. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

The chirp of the ending call let Natasha know it was safe to set her laptop back onto the bed and then collapse beside it like a ton of bricks. Why wasn’t this easier? It’d been half a year. That was ample time to get over a breakup. Furthermore, the nagging suspicion that this was somehow rooted in more than the breakup wouldn’t leave her. The flagship store had burned down. Natasha was running back and forth across the country trying to help sweep up the damage and keep Tony’s cheese from sliding off his cracker. Sure, she had help, but that was enough to stress out even someone who prided themselves on how effortlessly they moved through crises.

Turning to look at the computer, she scanned the email one more time. The sentence was still there.

She hesitated only a moment before she reached out and clicked “Send.”

~~~

By the time she’d brushed her teeth and put away her computer, her phone had a notification for a received email. Natasha clicked it as she settled into the comforter, turning down the brightness in hopes of helping her brain shut off if she kept the blue light to a minimum.

_Ms. Romanoff –_

_Glad to hear it, and thank you so much for getting this back to me so quickly._

_You have a meeting on Wednesday at 3pm at the Café Orlesian on Ewing. Informal, just to see if you two are a good fit._

_His name is Loki._

_Regards,  
Heimdall_

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
